


About A Boy

by devlandiablo



Category: Good Will Hunting (1997)
Genre: Everything reminds Will of Chuckie, F/M, Love Confession, M/M, Roadtrip, allusions to past child sexual abuse, implication of a murder, mention of past child abuse, soul searching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 13:54:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11105925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devlandiablo/pseuds/devlandiablo
Summary: Picking up where the movie left off, Will goes, like Chuckie wanted, no see you later, no goodbye, just gone. Sure, you can take the boy out of Southie, but can you take the Southie (aka the sight of Chuckie Sullivan wasted on beer and smelling like cigarettes and summer sun sweat) out of the boy?





	About A Boy

Will hasn’t even made it out of Massachusetts when he stops for gas. He sees a guy who looks like Chuckie, maybe not so much in the face but in the body, the movement of his hands when he lights up, one broad and long-fingered hand cupped to shield the lighter from the wind, the hunch of his shoulders.

Will takes a deep breath- gas and rust and rubber and the smell of the same damned brand of cigarettes Chuckie’s mom has bought for a decade. A pack of them is wedged in between the seats of Will’s car, with the big heavy lighter Will stole from Terry before the cops came. The cigarette burn on the side of his ribs itches. Will gets in the car and drives, windows down, the deathtrap car rattling West. 

He’s looking out the window of his no-tell motel outside Cleveland when he sees a man kiss a woman, through the rain, across the parking lot. The man leans in over her, pinning her against the brick, her hands coming around to his waist to pull him in. Will turns away, reminded of Chuckie outside the bar, laughing into a girl’s hair, in a Boston winter, another night Chuckie had gone home with a warm body and Will had gone home to a pile of books. 

That night, he dreams of the quaver in Chuckie’s voice when he asks about Skylar at the construction site, over beers, the sun-warm metal of the truck bumper confusing itself for skin in the mix of memory and dream. ‘Gone? Gone where?’ Will, fucking genius Will Hunting, didn’t see it then, how hurt Chuckie had been, at the thought Will might still be there in twenty years, Little League and Patriots, construction and death threats, how when Will had called him at 4 fucking 30 in the morning from Skylar’s dorm, he hadn’t gone back to sleep, but been there for Will, with coffee the next morning, and a beer that night, and in the dream, Will turns to him, the beer shattering across their boots as he kisses him. 

Will wakes up laughing through his tears.

“He didn’t want me to say goodbye.” Will says, to the water-stained ceiling, when he can breathe steadily again.

The people next door have woken up and are fucking again, or maybe they didn’t stop, or maybe they’re new people, in the same sheets. He knows that feeling. 

He calls the cops on a woman in Chicago. Her kid, bloody lipped and sobbing silently on the sidewalk, has his tiny hands raised over his head to ward off her sharp-nailed slaps. Chuckie had saved him from his foster father Terry, took him to the hospital, stood outside the room when they took the photos and the cops came in and asked him if that asshole had done any worse, because Will knows at 16 he looked like a goddamned twink, alright, the son of a bitch had made jokes about making a buck when the State check was late, when the belt and stick and wrench were there on the kitchen table and the fucker just said ‘choose’, and Chuckie had been there when he’d cried, laid out in a sleeping bag at three in the morning on the floor of Chuckie’s tiny bedroom, goddamned terrified of the piece of shit and not admitting what else happened in the house, with the yellow rose wallpaper and the faded green front door and the bedroom that didn’t have a lock.

Billy and Chuckie had jumped Terry last year and beat the shit out of him for Will, and Sean knows that, but there were things you didn’t tell, not ever, especially not to a good guy like Sean, like about how Terry had gone missing shortly after that, and Chuckie had bought Will a pack of beer and said he didn’t have to have any more nightmares, and they didn’t say a goddamned word about it ever again.

All the times Chuckie had been there for Will, they run themselves through his head when he tries to sleep, the glow of the Vegas strip bright outside the car window. He can hear the coyotes, their whine when they chase rabbits sounding like the crane, the tumble of bricks.

He wakes up hard, dreaming of Chuckie’s lips, wondering if his oral fixation on cigarettes and beer bottles and toothpicks, pen caps and food, could all be so he doesn’t touch Will in a way he thinks he shouldn’t, how Will wants him to.

It takes him a week to get to Berkeley. 

He finds Skylar, and feels nothing for her, remembering the fight.

He puts his feet in the water during a West Coast sunset, then gets back in the car.

It takes him four days to get back to Boston, to Chuckie.

***

He shows up on Chuckie’s porch when it’s snowing, a fucker of a blizzard on the way, the storm now just the precursor. Will likes the symmetry of that. He knows Chuckie is home alone, Mrs. Sullivan’s car gone.

He knocks and Chuckie opens the door and Will steps in, shoving the door closed with one hand as the other bears Chuckie back into the hall, nearly knocking over the shitty little table Chuckie trashpicked last summer to try and keep the junk contained. The clutter rattles but settles. 

Chuckie’s eyes are wide, his hands in fists at his sides, staring down at Will, nose flared. 

“You fucker. You left.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck you.” Chuckie grabs his shoulders and turns them so Will is against the wall, but he doesn’t hit him, just crowds in close against him, rough hands trembling. Will reaches out as Chuckie stares into his eyes, breathing heavily, the sound of a sports game drifting in from the living room.

Chuckie leans in as Will tugs on his shirt, collapsing against him, pressed together from shoulders to ankles. “You left.”

“You were right.” Will keeps his hand clenched in Chuckie’s shirt, a shirt he’s worn, holding him close. “I was sitting on a lottery ticket, but it wasn’t my brain and it wasn’t her, damn it. It was you. I kept waking up further away from you and hating it.”

Chuckie shakes his head, but he’s not telling Will no, not saying he doesn’t agree, it’s his ‘don’t hurt me again’ look, the look Will knows was on his face when Sean told him it wasn’t his fault. Will has to make that look go away, has to, like he has to do something with the numbers behind his eyes, because if Chuckie cries like Will did, that broken-open hoarse wail, Will is going to have to go out into the storm and let it swallow him up.

“Will-”

Will lifts his other hand and lays it, gently, on the side of Chuckie’s face.

“Morgan said I was wicked smart, in the bar with that Harvard prick, but Chuckie, I am such a damned idiot.” He rubs his thumb across Chuckie’s bottom lip, which trembles, the tip of his tongue darting out to touch the ragged end of Will’s nail before disappearing again, shocked, but Chuckie doesn’t move back. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm not sorry for being in love with you."

“I haven’t heard your voice in two weeks.”

“I was scared. I’m still scared. Sean was right when he said I was terrified to talk about myself, because this… I was so afraid this-” he gestures with his chin to the void and curl of air between them- “would be a step too far. You said ‘no goodbye, no see you later’ and I did that and it hurt. Worse than that fuckin’ wrench ever did.” He closes his eyes, drops his hands from Chuckie, to let him step back or take a swing or do whatever the fuck he wants. "I love you. I came back because you're my home."

"Open your eyes, Will."

Will does. Chuckie is still right there in front of him. He nods and leans in, eyes open, slow. He tastes like home when their lips finally meet. His breath fans across Will's face when they part. "I've loved you since I was fifteen." He kisses Will again. "Stay?"

Will nods. They head upstairs, their movements in Chuckie’s tiny twin bed slow and careful, insulated from the rest of Boston as the storm wraps the town in ice, and Will doesn't care that he doesn't sleep, when the gray light filters in through the cheap curtains over Chuckie's dresser, because he's exactly where he belongs. *** 

Later that morning, Will goes to Sean’s house and knocks, and Sean lets him in for a cup of coffee. He doesn’t say anything, just raises one brow slightly at the hickie proud above Will’s scarf, the faint stubble burn high on one cheek.

Will lets out a heavy breath, twisting the warm mug in his hands. “I saw about a girl. You were right, neither of us is perfect, but we’re not perfect for each other either. So.” Will shrugs, darting his eyes away, then back, and rocks on his heels, ready to drop the mug and run. “So, then I came home and saw about a boy instead and we goddamned are.”

Sean toasts him with his coffee cup.

***

Billy has known how Chuckie and Will feel about each other for a long time. It’s no surprise that he and Morgan find the two of them in a compromising position later that night, after Will gets back from Sean’s. 

“You two idiots finally using your fuckin’ words?”

“Yeah, Billy.” Chuckie nods as Will clenches his hoodie, looking like he might bolt and run into the snow bareassed, only stayed by the big warm hand on his hip.

“’Bout time.”

He drags Morgan away. Will drops his head on Chuckie’s shoulder, giggling through his nerves. Chuckie wraps him in a blanket and pulls him down on his lap to cuddle.

Billy’s not wrong, after all.


End file.
